As if spurred on by the success of the hard-to-come-by Amazon Kindle, which was rekindled by a recent endorsement by Oprah Winfrey, more and more vendors appear to be jumping into the ebook market. Like the Kindle, many of the new ebooks run Linux, and nearly all use the low-power E Ink EPD display technology.

The eSlick appears to be very similar to the recently introduced Hanlin eReader V3, as well as Bookeen's Cybook, which is on sale in Europe. Both of those products run Linux (Wolf Linux in Hanlin's case), offer similar 7.2 x 4.7 x 0.4-inch dimensions, provide similar USB and MP3 player features, and share the same E Ink 6-inch, 800×600 gray-scale display.

Whereas the eReader V3 and Cybook use the Samsung S3C2410 clocked at 200MHz, the eSlick runs the faster Samsung S3C2440, which offers an ARM920T RISC core clocked at 400MHz. The eSlick provides more memory than the Hanlin and Bookeen readers, with 128MB RAM, and like these two E Ink cousins, it supplies an SD card slot for storage, in this case offering a 2GB card standard, expandable to 4GB.

eSlick in white

The eSlick boasts up to 8,000 pages of continuous reading on a single charge, Foxit claims. An actual duration claim in hours is not provided, because EPD displays use power only to set an image, and none to maintain it. For more about EPD technology, see E Ink's AM-100 EPD dev kit.

E Ink says its technology has appeared in a variety of watches and other consumer electronic products from Seiko, Citizen, and Microsoft. It is also used in Sony's LibriE e-book, which is available in Japan. Linux ebook readers that use E Ink e-paper include the Readius, Amazon Kindle, eRead Star eBook STK-101, and the original iRex iLiad.

eSlick up close

Aside from the low weight, the key asset that seems to differentiate the eSlick is Foxit's embedded display software. The ebook reader offers Foxit Reader preinstalled, providing features including font controls with text reflow, and a zoom capability that is said to enlarge pages from 50 percent to 400 percent. Format support is limited to PDF and TXT files, but the device ships with Foxit's PC-based PDF Creator software, which is said to convert any printable document with formats including TXT, PPT, DOC, XLS, and HTML to PDF document format. Documents can then be downloaded to the eSlick via the USB connection. The Creator software, however, only runs on Windows.